Episode 1 - Introduction & Vision
Thanks so much for coming to the Capitalism for Good podcast! In the future episodes, I’ll be interviewing business leaders about the decisions they make that support their community including both their internal culture and external customers & community. On the flip side, as consumers, we have the power of purse in some situations to choose where our dollars go. I recognize that we’re all different and complex, thus will have different priorities and values influencing our decisions. We’ll dig into how our choices as customers can support these businesses that may align with our values at the time.
As an amateur creator, I’ll be starting with the businesses and leaders that I know and support with the intention that we’ll dig into those that are new to me. Each episode will have a corresponding blog post with a summary, references, links, clarifications, and corrections, as appropriate. If you have recommendations for businesses and leaders you know and support, those can be submitted through the Contact tab on the website or by emailing CFGMediaGroup@gmail.com.
All the best,
Andrea
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Transcript:
“Hi folks, thanks so much for coming to listen to the Capitalism for Good podcast. I appreciate you coming along this journey with me. It will be a journey.
I'm sure it's gonna evolve well beyond what I anticipate it to look like. This idea has been rolling around in my brain for the past, I don't know, year or so, probably even longer than that before you really realized what it might end up looking like. And today, I'm here to set the stage for what I anticipate going forward this to be.
I, myself, am 34 years old. I've been working for the better part of two decades. I think I started working somewhere around 14 or 15.
I’m a huge nerd, so I made some notes, and I tried to list out every job that I've ever had, and every company that I've ever worked for. At least, what I can remember, what has stuck in this noggin, which I don't have the world's best memory, but at least from what I can recall, I've worked at least 27 jobs for 13 different entities. On top of that, I have worked for a number of non-profit organizations in a volunteer role.
I've sat on committees and boards. I currently sit on the board of directors for a regional non-profit since its inception. And in all of those different positions, I've had the opportunity to observe and ask questions and to really dig into what that might look like in terms of different management styles, different motivations, different visions, and different priorities for all of these organizations.
And I really thought about really what the impact of that is. I myself have managed and been a supervisor of a number of different places. And so I've looked at that from how do I make these types of decisions?
What really is important to me? And what “do I think is most important to the employees that I'm managing? And how can me supporting them really help our business in the long term?
How can we retain clients? How can I also retain employees? I mean, the economic impact of that from just an internal insular perspective, it is important.
If you are decreasing employee turnover, you're decreasing the waste of some of your budget. You are creating more stability going forward. And I just think that there is such an impact from that on not just that insular local level, but also, it's 2024.
Our insular philosophy of how we conduct business has the potential to have global impacts. We buy goods from other countries with different kinds of government. Some of our business leaders of our largest businesses in America, it's 2024, this is kind of a big hot button issue right now.
Some of our leaders of those large businesses are also crossing into government in a real tangible way, whereas maybe in the past, it could have been a little more influential, and now it's going to be a little more tangible and real. And there are tons of examples. There's so much “crossover.
There's so much crossover when it comes to regulations and the things that we have access to and the dollars of things and wages and benefits and the things that you are mandated to do and the things that you have the choice to do and where you're located, where you're manufacturing is all of these types of things are complex and they make these decisions and these impacts hold a significant amount of weight. And I would argue a significant amount more weight than they used to in the past. This gets really overwhelming to me when I start thinking about it in a kind of global big giant picture way.
I can tell you myself, it's early November, I already put up my Christmas tree because that's the kind of person that I am. I love the winter, I love Christmas, I love the holidays, I love the cold, and I really wanted some more of that in my life. And so I already put up my Christmas tree.
It's a fake Christmas tree. And when I put it together, I realized the top section, the lights don't work. And after going through and checking every light “bulb and doing all of the things, I'm going to need to get some new lights for that tree or a full new tree.
But we're going to try to salvage it by just getting new lights. And so if I'm looking at things from my perspective of, okay, so what are my priorities? My priorities are the environment, the economy, and bettering the community.
So where am I going to choose to go look for these Christmas lights? How do we even go about evaluating which business is the best one? But also I'm not trying to shell out hundreds of dollars for a strand of Christmas lights.
So trying to find the middle ground there, or I broke something in my bathroom, so I'm looking for some superglue. Where do I go about buying superglue that will also kind of fit within those same parameters? It gets really overwhelming to me.
So that kind of leads me to, I'm going to call out one of my biases here, that I'm going to start with the businesses that I know. I'm going to start with leaders that I know. I'm going to start with places that I, myself, am “a supporter of and really just shine a spotlight on them.
I'm going to ask each of these business leaders that I interview to also shout out other businesses that they see that are doing good in the community, things that they personally support, with the intention that while I'm starting here at this point where I am really close to them and hold a bunch of bias, we'll get to things that are going to be brand new to me and I'm going to be learning right alongside you. So just recognize that. Another thing that I'll just kind of call out from my perspective is I am a true, true believer in the world is not black and white.
There is so much gray. So this podcast, while it's in the name Capitalism for Good, I'm not meaning to put businesses into these like strict categories. You are good, or you are bad, or you are good, or you are evil, or these are the ones you have to buy things from, and these are the ones you should never buy things from.
I think that that's a little too simplistic for such a complex world that we're “n. And like I said, I truly believe that things evolve and change well beyond anything that we could ever imagine, so what might be true in November, December of 2024 might not be true in 2025, or might not be available in 2026, or whatever that might be. So rather than looking at things from that kind of a categorical sense, really what I'm hoping to do is to dig into the motivations that are beneath these types of decisions that we as leaders make, and how we all interact together.
How does my decision about where to buy superglue impact the employees of that company, and the benefits that they're able to get, and those kinds of things. Eventually, I'd love down the road to talk to some different economists about some dollars and cents, some real factual numbers of what this might look like, and really how if you approach things from a certain perspective, whether that's filling a void within your community, or pouring some money and some investment into the professional development of your employees, or maybe it's your employee is really, really great and super, super talented, but they hit a ceiling for what “you have available within your company, but you support them as an individual, so they go work for someone else for a few years, gain some new skills, and while you grow, maybe you might have a position for them like five years down the road, and they've got enough loyalty in you, in your business, in your leadership, But they're gonna come back and they're gonna work for you again. And how does that save you money in the long term?
How does that save you time? Because there will be a decreased level of training that you will need to do with that person to bring them on board because they're already kind of familiar with certain things. How does it decrease your advertising dollars?
Because naturally, by word of mouth, more and more people are gonna hear about your business and want to come to it. It could be a million different things. Also, from kind of that type of perspective of things are gray and things evolve, I recognize that everyone has different priorities and different values and different experiences that shape the way that they view what is most important.
And what's most important to “someone today could likely change. You know, it could change in a couple days, it could change in a couple years. Those things will naturally evolve.
And so, when we're talking to some of these business leaders about the things that they're talking about, like, it could be such a wide breadth of topics in different types of fields. You know, we could be talking to someone who believes really strongly and is really skilled in design, and they're making the environment around them beautiful, which then, you know, makes someone's day a little more cheerful, and maybe it makes them a little more confident in the things that they're doing. Maybe it makes people feel really calm when they're walking into their business.
So, taking something kind of superficial, but really what's the impact of that that might be viewed as superficial? If the environment is really important to someone, are we looking at using sustainable materials or cutting your carbon footprint, or planting extra trees, or are we talking to business leaders who have companies where there's a significant community give-back portion? Is there something where they're filling a void that might not exist previously within their “community?
It also kind of takes me to recognizing that some of the businesses and some of the kind of lens through which I'll be looking at these businesses is from a privileged perspective. I recognize that if we're talking about the decision of where to buy your groceries, and what store to pick your produce from, that's also given that you don't live in a food desert, it's that you have the means available, whether that's money, or whether that's time, or whatever it may be, to choose where you get your food from. Maybe that's not truly an option for you right now.
Maybe it will be later. We don't know. Just knowing that while these things might be available to someone, they might not be easily accessible to others.
Is there a way that we can change that? Is there a way that we can encourage kind of filling those voids, filling those gaps in services, giving people more choices and more options in the future? I don't know.
I kind of hope so. I also hope that we are just naturally shining a light on folks that inherently are trying to do things to better their “community and to uplift one another. Again, I think these things are super complex and all tied together.
I think that money talks and the power of the purse is powerful. So what are ways that we can use that power to do some good in our communities? Recognizing that there may not be a situation in which you can make all of these decisions.
Maybe you have to kind of pick and choose which are the ones that are important to you, but maybe, you know, you got to buy your super glue at whatever XYZ name named big business that you might not super support, but they have the super glue that you need right now. You know, it just, I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad about the decisions that they make, but yet kind of focusing on the more positive aspect of it.
So, yeah, that's kind of the perspective that I've got. That's where I will be coming from. Again, I'm sure it will change a ton moving forward, but I'm excited to dig in.
I'm excited to learn more, and I'm excited to learn more in a transparent way, so where other folks “can kind of come along with me in this journey, is I do some digging in to and some research into and some investigating into how this all works together and how all of our kind of everyday decisions can have really big global impacts. So thanks so much for coming along. You'll notice in the episode descriptions moving forward, a call out who it is that I'm speaking to, what business they're working from, and also the location.
Are they online? Are they a brick and mortar store? Are they regional?
Are there places all over? And then there will be a blog post that will go more in-depth in on the website. They'll be associated, they'll all be linked together, there'll be references.
I also recognize not only are we complex, but we are also, we're human and we make mistakes. So there'll be corrections, clarifications that might be needed. I've worked in several different fields that'll have really specific jargon and acronyms.
We'll try to clarify those things to make them easily accessible. Also, through that website, if you've got thoughts and ideas about local businesses or maybe even global businesses that you yourself are a “patron of and you want to shine the spotlight on those, send me those recommendations. I would love to dig in to those and kind of see if they are a good fit to highlight as well.
So yeah, I'm excited to see where this goes. I'm excited to see what happens. And thanks again for coming along with me.
I wish you all the best.”
